


make me a promise

by Emlee_J



Series: One Hundred and Seventy-Two Centimetres [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Drabble, First Kiss, Fluff, M/M, Manga Spoilers, Third Year
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:08:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25804138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emlee_J/pseuds/Emlee_J
Summary: As always, Tobio spots what Hinata is going to do before Hinata even does it.“No,” he blurts out, just as Hinata leans in close, a whisper of breath between them and their lips brushing.Hinata freezes immediately, and for a beat there is nothing except the rain against the window pane and Tobio’s heartbeat thudding in his ears. A flash of pink as Hinata’s tongue darts out to wet his lips, and then the other boy visibly swallows and starts to retreat, his eyes dull with rejection.Before he can go too far, Tobio’s hand shoots out, dropping his pencil to the bedding, and he sinks it into soft orange waves and holds Hinata in place. “Not yet,” he elaborates.-In which Kageyama makes Hinata promise to wait.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio
Series: One Hundred and Seventy-Two Centimetres [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1931680
Comments: 60
Kudos: 835





	make me a promise

**Author's Note:**

> thank u to anna and cupcake for the prompt <333333 [kithes]

_“Tobio, you should never make a promise you can’t keep.”_

Kazuyo-san had told him this once, and Tobio had, like with most things his grandpa told him, taken the words to heart. He never declared anything he didn’t mean, didn’t swear he’d do anything he didn’t intend to do, and never promised anything he wasn’t sure he would fulfil.

Hinata, he thinks, is a little different.

The boy makes promises all the time. Sometimes not always with the word itself, but the intent is there. Hinata is bold and brash and determination personified. From the smallest of tasks to promising Tobio an entire career, Hinata makes promises every day with his whole heart, loud and bright. A flashfire in words.

Sometimes they come true, other times, they do not.

There’s one promise that blossoms in the unlikeliest of ways.

It’s winter. It’s cold and raining and there’s a brisk chill in the air that brings the threat of snow.

Tobio sits on his bed by the headrest and Hinata sits at the foot of it, a sprawl of homework between them and various other mathematics related detritus.

“I don’t think…” Hinata starts slowly, his lips moving around the wood of his pencil that he’s currently chewing on. “That quadratic equations are actually real.”

“Bless you,” Tobio grunts, not paying attention, as he glares down at his sheet and tries to remember when exactly all the numbers got replaced with fucking letters.

Tsukishima and Yachi both are up to their eyes in extra work and study as they try to complete their college applications and maintain their duties at the club. Spring Nationals whisper on the breeze for the final time – the final shot at the top. They can do it, Tobio can feel it, the phantom weight of a medal against his chest when he closes his eyes. But with so much practice and organisation and work work _work,_ there left very little time for anything else.

Which included tutoring himself and Hinata.

Yamaguchi helped them on occasion but he couldn’t always be free, and so here they were, struggling through maths together when neither of them knew what the other half of the calculator was _actually_ for.

The evening passes slowly, with the thrash of rain against Tobio’s bedroom window and the soft whistle-scratch of pencils across paper as they write, and re-write, their answers. Tobio gets to one question and has to sit and think for what feels like a solid hour in itself, staring at the mash of letters and angles and lines for so long he can see volleyball diagrams in them.

As he stares and wonders if he can just bullshit this answer just so his eyes will stop crossing, he’s vaguely aware of the sound of objects being shuffled over fabric as Hinata clears a path across the duvet. Tobio ignores it, not willing to break his concentration just yet for whatever stupid thing Hinata is currently doing to procrastinate, until there is a hand on his knee and a tug on his trouser leg.

Tobio grunts but doesn’t look up, running exasperated fingers through his hair (so much shorter now, and harder to tug. He almost regrets asking Hinata to trim it for him.) There’s another tug and then an insistent _“Kageyama,”_ and Tobio lifts his eyes wearily.

Hinata has crawled across the bed to almost drape himself across Tobio’s shins, frowning at him in that way that spells determination and annoyance that Tobio isn’t giving him his absolute, full attention. With those stupid bright orange eyebrows all scrunched down and that mouth pursed in a petulant pout.

“What?” Tobio huffs, jiggling his knees.

Hinata is not dislodged, instead pushing and pulling until Tobio obligingly spreads them and then he slots himself between Tobio’s legs like it’s no big deal and that he does this every day. But he doesn’t. It’s striking and daring, like everything Hinata does, a fire burning a path to his goal. The other nudges closer, until their torsos are almost touching.

For all his spark and blaze, Hinata looks oddly soft in this moment. He’d pinched one of Tobio’s hoodies when they’d arrived, his own yellow one damp around the collar from where the rain had sneaked in underneath his umbrella. It doesn’t quite swamp him as much as it did back in first year, but the fabric still hangs loose on him – bunches and rolls of sweet grey making him look cosy and soft, complementing the waves of his hair which is getting far too long now, almost hanging in his eyes.

 _“What?”_ Tobio asks again, his voice cracking around a croak as Hinata edges closer still.

“I never get to see you concentrate like that off the court,” Hinata says, as though that explained everything, and rocks his torso until they’re almost nose-to-nose.

As always, Tobio spots what Hinata is going to do before Hinata even does it.

“No,” he blurts out, just as Hinata leans in close, a whisper of breath between them and their lips brushing.

Hinata freezes immediately, and for a beat there is nothing except the rain against the window pane and Tobio’s heartbeat thudding in his ears. A flash of pink as Hinata’s tongue darts out to wet his lips, and then the other boy visibly swallows and starts to retreat, his eyes dull with rejection.

Before he can go too far, Tobio’s hand shoots out, dropping his pencil to the bedding, and he sinks it into soft orange waves and holds Hinata in place. “Not yet,” he elaborates, just as cryptic as Hinata had been earlier, and his partner huffs in his exasperation.

There’s a relief though, dancing in the brown, as Hinata eyes him with curiosity and impatience. It should feel strange, really, Tobio thinks distantly, to have his best friend suddenly throw himself into his personal space and demand a kiss with seemingly no prior thought behind it, but it doesn’t feel strange at all.

Hinata always did exactly what he wanted, after all.

“Not yet _what?”_ Hinata whines, tossing his head in protest at Tobio’s grip on the back of his skull.

Tobio licks his own lips, a mirror image, and he swears Hinata _growls_ at him.

“After Nationals,” Tobio rasps around the tightness in his throat.

Hinata cocks his head at him, and Tobio’s fingers slide delightfully through soft ginger. His partner says nothing, just eyes him with a bright amber stare, silently demanding an explanation.

“You’ll get greedy,” Tobio says, voice low, dragging across the dryness in his mouth.

It’s true though. He gives Hinata one kiss now, and then it’ll be two, then three, then four in all the space of the next hour. They’ll never get any work done. And it won’t stop tonight, because Hinata is a grabby, demanding little thing, and it’ll be requests for kisses all the time whenever there isn’t a ball in their hands.

And it’s not like Tobio doesn’t want that, doesn’t want to shove the collection of calculators and protractors and pencils from his bed to the floor and drag Hinata close by his borrowed jumper, but he can’t. He has to nip this in the bud now before that flower blooms and Hinata develops something else to be an insatiable beast for.

“I won’t get greedy,” Hinata protests, sulkily, his mouth pursing. Tobio slips his hand from round the back of his head and squishes his cheeks instead, causing that pouting mouth to pop out like a fish. _“I won’t!_ ” Hinata mumbles again, unintelligibly. He reaches up and pushes Tobio’s hand away irritably and then is suddenly hurtling forward, crowding into Tobio’s space before he has time to lean away.

Tobio’s tempted to reach up and slam a hand over his mouth to protect it from any kissing sneak attacks, but then Hinata is thudding his forehead against his and staring at him with _those_ eyes – the golden ones, the fire and the brimstone, the ones that _burn._ So he freezes, shallow little breaths shuddering his ribcage.

“Promise?” Hinata demands.

Tobio’s brow tries to furrow, but it’s held in place by Hinata’s, so he opts to squint at him instead.

It feels, a little bit, like being outside the club room – two years ago now – where Tobio had challenged (and hoped) for Hinata to rise up and meet him on the world’s stage. Where Hinata had promised him, promised him _so many years_ , so easily and earnestly and was still working to keep it. And Kazuyo-san’s words float through his head again, and Tobio’s heart gives a little flutter.

“Promise,” Tobio grunts, and he leans back just enough that he can rock his head forward again and thonk his forehead against Hinata’s. “If we win.”

He expects another protest – _no Kageyama! You said after Nationals, not if we win!_ But there’s nothing, just a little glimmer in those eyes, a glimpse of fire, and then Hinata is leaning back away out of his space with a wicked little smile on his face. _“When_ we win,” he says, all certainty and bold declaration all over again, promising things just so, so easily.

Tobio lets his breath fall from his lungs slowly, watching his friend scoot back over the bedding and back into his previous spot, the warmth left behind striking and lonely.

“When we win,” he echoes, a little smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as he bumps his foot against Hinata’s and tries to look at his algebra homework and see something other than volleyball patterns.

Hinata keeps his promise, because he’s Hinata, and Tobio wishes, with every fibre of himself that wasn’t already screaming, that he hadn’t, as he watches the ball fall on their side of the court in the last rally of the semis and the final whistle screeches in his ears.

He’s too far away to have tried to reach it, his body angled in a helpless twist, but Hinata had been close. His partner is sprawled across the floor from his desperate dive, hand outstretched and frozen, two of their teammates in similar positions, his expression hidden from the way his head in angled. Tobio has no wish to see it, he knows it’s mirrored in his own.

They huddle away, the pair of them, once the formalities are dealt with and there no more obligations. The rest of the team is scattered around, getting changed or bidding farewell to the orange court, some of the younger members sniffling and trying to hide their tears. They still have one more game, the battle now for third place, but the dream of all-conquering victory is finally over.

Hinata just snags his hand and tugs and Tobio follows, ignores the watchful eye of Tsukishima or how Yamaguchi speaks a little louder to catch a curious kouhai’s gaze and how Yachi grabs Ukai’s attention.

They sneak away, into the halls of the stadium, until they find a corner that is quiet and secluded and probably so out of the way they’ll probably both get lost trying to get back again. Neither of them really care.

Hinata drops his hand when they stop and winds his arms around his waist and buries his face in his sweat-damp jersey. He’s not crying, Tobio can tell, but his breath is shuddery and there’s a tremble to his limbs that’s from more than just exhaustion. Tobio gnaws on his lip and encircles his arms around Hinata’s shoulders, buries his nose into rumpled fire and tries not to break.

They stand there for a long, long moment, just trembling and breathing and then Hinata is whimpering into his neck.

“I _really_ wanted to kiss you.”

Tobio’s arms tighten so fiercely Hinata grunts from the force. “I said after we win,” he growls, and he feels Hinata wiggle in his grip, and does not let go. “We still have one more game, idiot. We need to get third place.” 

“But we didn't _win Nationals,_ Kageyama! This is _cheat-“_

 _“After_ Nationals," Tobio reiterates, louder, drowning out the protest and drawing strange looks from the few people dotted in the corridor. “After Nationals, if we win.”

Hinata is quiet, stilling in Tobio’s arms. He’s so pensive Tobio releases him, drawing back just enough so he can peer into his face. It’s crumpled, in thought and frustration, and Tobio waits with slowly shredding patience. Hinata usually keeps his promises, when he can, but he’s also a bold and reckless thing, who does what he wishes and sometimes all Tobio can do is trail after him, squinting in the sunlight.

Hinata shifts from foot to foot, clearly weighing up his options. He could, Tobio knows, throw their promise out the window and kiss him here and now, and Tobio wouldn’t even stop him. But he doesn’t, he just stares up at Tobio with a face that’s almost carefully blank in his determination. “When we win?” He clarifies again, soft and sure.

“When we win,” Tobio repeats, and turns on his heel to stalk back down the corridor to where their team is waiting, feeling rather than hearing Hinata match his step.

The next time, the ball lands on the correct side of the net, and Tobio allows himself to sink onto the court for an altogether different reason. Hinata collapses next to him, flopping sideways until he’s leaning on him, panting harshly and smiling so wide sweat runs into the dimples in his cheeks.

Tobio wants to kiss him so badly.

But, of course, it’s Hinata who moves first. Because Hinata always does exactly what Hinata wants to do, and he leans up to press the smallest of kisses to the underside of Tobio’s jaw, so light and fleeting Tobio barely feels it.

He wants to protest. Shove him to the ground and kiss him back properly. Wants to drag him somewhere private all over again but there’s no time before there’s a scrum of teammates crashing against their backs. Tobio grunts with the force and Hinata giggles maniacally beside him, drunk on joy, and it’s one big sweaty pile for far too long before Yamaguchi dutifully starts peeling people away.

They climb to their feet, shakily, together, to stand in a line with everyone else and shake their opponents’ hands. Their teammates scurry off the court obediently, except for Tsukishima and Yamaguchi, who are huddled together, and Tobio takes the moment to turn back to Hinata, who is staring up at him expectantly.

“Not now-“ he just manages to blurt out, but it’s too late. Hinata is already reaching up and grabbing at his jersey with his greedy little hands and dragging him down until their foreheads are pressed against each other and they’re all together so close Tobio can’t even tell whose breath is whose.

“People will _see-“_ he hisses, before Hinata whispers, _“nah,”_ and kisses him quick.

It’s so daring, Tobio forgets to move, or breathe. With the angle and the way their heads are bent they are almost hidden, especially with their general distance from everybody else, standing in the middle of the court like this, but it’s still so _open_. In the middle of a crowded stadium, with tv cameras trained on them and everyone they know watching, it’s so ridiculously brazen and exposed.

But Tobio can’t help be dragged around by this ridiculous little daredevil. Who looks at the world and goes _‘I’ll do this instead’_ and makes his own rules. Makes declarations every day like it’s nothing, and then makes miracles come true through sheer force.

And, well, Hinata is normally good at keeping his promises.

So Tobio returns the pressure, winds an arm around Hinata to squeeze his waist quick, keeps the fleeting moment going for as long as they both dare before they pull apart. It only lasted a few seconds, a few beats in time, a short press of lips, nothing more. But every part of Tobio still tingles from head to toe and he cannot stop himself from smiling just as widely as Hinata as they stagger their way off the court.

From the way Hinata eyes him and hovers and snags at his clothing, Tobio knows there will be more later. Because Hinata is greedy and never settles, and Tobio can’t help but indulge him.

But, well, he thinks, much later on when Hinata is clambering into his lap swathed in his grey hoodie again, all soft and warm and chasing for kisses-

He did promise.

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me on Twitter! @Emlee_J


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